Customer Reviews

Nine Days of Dunkirk

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

David Divine (born Arthur Durham Divine) was a Royal Navy officer who actually participated in the events of the Dunkirk evacuation for the British Expeditionary Force from the continent in 1940. However, he was in this work written an excellent analysis and history of the circumstances and events that surrounded and made up this "game-changing" moment of the Second World War. Instead of having Britain on its knees and suing for peace, the successful evacuation made it possible for it to even consider continuing the war against Nazi Germany.
Devoting several chapters on the events leading up to the decision to withdraw British forces from Europe over the beaches and piers of Dunkirk, David Divine then devotes a single chapter each to each of the nine days of the actual evacuation. He then addresses the successes and failures of Germany, France, Belgium, and Britain in a chapter upon how each nation dealt with the circumstances leading up to and the evacuation and to the evacuation itself.

This is probably not the definitive book on Dunkirk, since Divine was writing in the years before the full story of British intelligence and code-breaking was made public. However, it is one of the earliest accounts of it drawing upon extensive historical records and accounts and presented as a history and not as a memoir or autobiography. The well-presented maps and the final chapters of analysis by the author, in addition to the well-told main story, do make it one of the important works for any serious study of the BEF's war in France in 1940 and it's rescue by the Royal Navy, French Navy, and Britain's 'small boats'.